Another Runner
by messyhead
Summary: This is a sequel to the final episode of the 70's series, "On The Run". Thanks to members of The Bionic Project for support and encouragement!
1. Chapter 1

It had been just long enough for her to stop dreading the ring of the telephone. Nowadays when she picked up the receiver it was Helen, or the school, or Chris, or at the very worst, a vacuum cleaner salesman offering an in-home demonstration. So she was caught unawares by the voice on the other end.

"Jaime, it's Russ."

There it was. That grave, official OSI tone which had always made her snap to high alert. Now it made her angry. It had been two months since she had tried to resign from the OSI, and, just like in a creepy spy novel, it had been made abundantly clear that she would not be allowed to retire - probably ever. Since then they had been decent enough to give her a break and leave her in peace. Good thing too, because she was still mad as hell about the whole thing. Mostly she tried not to think about it, but when she did she reached boiling point in seconds. In the aftermath of that debacle there had been some cozy talk from the Washington big shots, meant to placate her after hunting her down like a deer in the woods - but it had a hollow ring to it. Certainly her best friends in the world worked at the OSI, but the fact was they were all caught up in the big cold machinery of that institution - and she had come to almost hate it. It had yanked her in three years ago by giving her a gift so extraordinary it could never be repaid. Still, she tried - day after day, year after year - until the OSI ground her down to the point she wasn't even sure there was a soul left in her anymore.

Finally she had asserted herself, and Oscar and all the bureaucrats above him in the food chain agreed to back off. This period away had been wonderful - reaffirming in her that her impulse to leave intelligence work behind had been well founded. Her life was normal. She worked, she mucked out the barn, she watched TV, she drank beer with the other teachers on Friday night - she was even sleeping soundly eight hours a night!

If Chris were around more often life would be near perfect. Because OSI business kept him away in Washington they only saw each other on weekends (at best), and it perpetually felt like a new relationship - which was nice in some ways and frustrating in others. Despite his absences, Jaime felt he had a steadying effect on her. He was a practical and kindly guy, if occasionally irritable and short on imagination.

"I'm not ready yet, Russ. Not even close." she said firmly into the telephone.

"Actually, Jaime, this is personal." Russ interjected. "Oscar is gone."

"What?!" she asked, her indignation turning into heart clenching fear. "Gone? What do you mean _gone_?!" She realized in that instant that there was something inevitable about this phone call, like she'd been unconsciously waiting for it for years. Someday, someone close to her would be 'gone'.

"He didn't show up this morning. He was due back today after taking Thursday and Friday off last week. Callahan and I finally went into his office and we found a letter of resignation on the desk. It looks like he took that time to disappear - there's no sign of him at home or anywhere else we'd be likely to find him." He hesitated, allowing Jaime a moment to absorb the information. "I thought you'd want to know."

"Oh my God, Russ," she breathed, "I thought you were telling me he was dead." She wobbled to the bed and sat down, her heart racing. Her momentary relief was instantly replaced by fresh anxieties. "He disappeared? Oscar wouldn't disappear - he wouldn't do that. What if he was kidnapped?"

"I don't think so, Jaime. If you'd ever asked me hypothetically how Oscar would choose to disappear, this is exactly how I would imagine it - no loose ends. He practically had my breakfast set out for me when I came in this morning."

It was unthinkable. Oscar without the OSI, and worse yet, the OSI without Oscar - well, she couldn't imagine what would become of both of them.

"But...why?" was all she could manage. Looming large in her mind was another deeply bothersome question - Why hadn't he told her? Why hadn't he been in touch?

Russ could only guess at his motives, but it had been a particularly hellish couple of months since Jaime had left. A double agent had stolen two pieces of top secret technology and sold them to the Soviets; there had been a breakdown in important talks with a defecting Chinese scientist, and a close call with a stolen nuclear weapon in Bulgaria. In that last crisis they had lost two agents - one of whom had been an old friend of Oscar's. Not surprisingly, he took the whole thing very hard.

"Oh dear." she sighed, suddenly wishing she had called him. "What did his letter say?"

"It's pretty basic. "I, Oscar Goldman, am resigning from the Directorship of the Office of Scientific Information effective immediately. Do not look for me. After dedicating my life to the service of my country, I fully expect that you will believe me when I say that I am in possession of no secret documents, and have no intention of revealing any of my knowledge of the secrets of this country to any person. Nor do I need protection. Please immediately change all top secret codes to which I have had access. You will find a comprehensive code list and documentation to all projects in segregated vaults according to security level."" She heard a rustle of paper, and Russ sighed before he continued. "Then there's some stuff about the new chain of command - he's put me in charge along with Art Kasher - you know, that Deputy Director you never see? And... that's it."

"Nothing else?"

"No. Nothing."

The world was still somersaulting around her when she put the phone down a minute later.

The more she thought about it, the uneasier she felt. Oscar would have had to be under incredible duress to pull a stunt like this. If it was some sort of breakdown, which seemed increasingly likely, he had disappeared like an injured animal when he needed help the most. And she couldn't deny that to some measure, she was hurt - why hadn't he told her? That memorable afternoon in her apartment he had said something which she thought of almost daily. He had told her he loved her, and that she was "the closest thing to family I'll ever have." It was the seal on an already close relationship - this just didn't make any sense.

She immediately called Russ back.

"I have to find him Russ. I need to know he's okay."

"You don't have to do that, Jaime. The NSB will likely find him."

"But that's not good enough! I don't trust those guys - do you?"

"Well," he replied uncertainly, "I don't think they'd harm him..."

"Russ - they practically issued a 'wanted dead or alive' poster for me - imagine what they'd do with Oscar. No - I've got to find him."

She heard him breathe deeply. Undoubtedly he was under a lot of stress. "Listen, Jaime," he finally said, his tone cautious, "if you're really going to do this I'll help where I can, but it won't be much. Everyone is going to be watching me like a hawk - to see if I can fill Oscar's shoes - and what they most of all want to see is that I don't share his ... gee, how do they put it?...his tendency to be get emotional."

"Is that what they say about him?" she asked angrily. "Just because he happens to care?"

"They do. Okay..." Russ's voice switched into planning mode, "We're going to have to do some fancy footwork to dodge the NSB, because they'll be all over you - but if you do find him you've got the best chance of figuring out what's going on - as a friend - and the best chance of talking some sense into him."

"Yeah." Jaime replied. She wasn't so certain of that last sentiment - she was hardly in the position or the mood to talk 'sense' to anyone about the OSI.

"Can you come out to Washington tonight?"

"Of course." she replied, suddenly feeling the familiar wave of stress she associated with a mission. If she weren't so worried, she would be just a little angry at Oscar. A mission for a friend was one she could not refuse. This was one of the ways the OSI had always sucked her in - she just hated standing around in a crisis with nothing to do.


	2. Chapter 2

Before she knew it she had packed her bags, left Max with Helen and Jim, driven into LA and got herself on a night flight to DC. The moves were all so familiar, and so wearying. She spent the trip biting her thumbnail and fretting. It was perhaps Oscar's greatest asset and worst flaw that he was so good at hiding his own feelings. He was always the man in control, the one you could rely on - a rock. When she thought of her recent retirement crisis, she had been so caught up in her own drama that it didn't occur to her (as usual, really) to look into his eyes to see what was going on in there. He invariably told her he was fine - in fact, she could count on one hand the number of times he had complained to her, and even then she had to pull it out of him. He worried, agonized - but not on his own behalf. Gnawing at her was the notion that she had somehow let him down, but at the same time, how do you help a man with such a solid false front?

Upon arrival in Washington, she booked into the Watergate Hotel for a few precious hours of sleep. Russ picked her up very early the next morning, explaining that he could hold the NSB off for another day at most, so it was important that they 'get at it'. They walked in to the OSI together, each telling a number of people that she was bound immediately for a mission in Dubai. As always, she wanted to make the rounds all her friends and catch up on their respective lives - but today she resisted, citing the urgency of the situation in Dubai. She did manage brief visits with her two nearest and dearest - Rudy and Callahan - who were both visibly upset by Oscar's sudden departure.

At nine a.m. she boarded a plane for Dubai, walked straight through the galley kitchen and into the large empty container that had just delivered meals for the flight. As it pulled back from the aircraft, lowered on the forklift and was transported back toward the terminal, Jaime threw on the airport crew jumpsuit and baseball cap provided for her, and walked unimpeded out into the terminal. Now she was officially on her way to Dubai. Good old Russ.

Under an assumed name she then picked up a rental car and drove herself to a small furnished apartment in Georgetown. Russ was there to greet her, beckoning her in like an anxious real estate agent. He had thoughtfully brought with him with several women's outfits, made to measure, and some appallingly frumpy wigs so she theoretically could walk around Washington unrecognized. This was where she was to stay, but she barely took time to look around the place.

"So lets go. We're really close to Oscar's place, right?" she said to Russ. Oscar was doubtless not going to leave a trail of breadcrumbs behind him, and she had the strong feeling it was going to be a long hard search - and a race against Bill Parr.

Russ smiled slyly - an unusual expression considering the circumstances. "Now I don't want you to get the wrong idea, but follow me." he said, leading her into the bedroom. Pushing aside a rug, he revealed a trap door in the floor. "This goes straight there." he said with satisfaction. "Parr and the NSB know nothing about it - and we'll want to keep it that way." They squeezed down into the low tunnel, Russ leading with a flashlight.

"Good lord! Would he even fit through here?" Jaime whispered, scuffing her head on the low ceiling. They walked through the dank passage hunched over, longer than was pleasant - she guessed it was the better part of a block before they hit a wall, and right above it, another trap door. They both held their breath as Jaime listened for any stirrings above them, and when she deemed it safe he pushed upward and they reentered the world of light and air in what was apparently Oscar's bedroom. When Russ dropped the hatch shut, Jaime noted that the contours neatly fit to the hardwood floor.

"How do I get that open again?"

"Ah!" Russ replied. He pressed a corner of a short floorboard and it lifted, revealing a latch.

She had been to Oscar's house on numerous occasions, but never without its occupant in attendance. It felt as though he might come from another room any second and ask them what they thought they were doing. She wished he would. _Houses are such organic things_, she thought to herself. _You can always tell how long they've been left alone - and it's not the dust or neglect so much as a feeling of emptiness that grows the longer they've been left uninhabited._ Oscar's house felt recently occupied - in the way the sheets stay warm for a moment after someone leaves the bed. She and Russ toured around together, contemplating just how Jaime should go about the monumental task of trying to figure out his whereabouts by some clue left in his house. Russ would soon have to leave her to get back to the burdensome business of running the show in the boss's absence - and to the thankless task of announcing his sudden retirement.

The house was not large, Jaime noted with gratitude. A living room, study, kitchen, two bedrooms and two bathrooms. She'd always thought it a very nice house - a place an overburdened person could use as a refuge. Another mercy was that he was not a pack rat. In fact it was so scrupulously clean it was as though he had expected them. She opened the fridge - empty except for jars of condiments, jams and pickles. She imagined Oscar standing at the counter in his shirtsleeves, putting jam on his toast in the morning - it made her sad.

They agreed that the study would be a good place to start. She would look through his bills. If the NSB did show up, this would be the first place they would look.

"We're going to be lucky if we find anything." Russ said gloomily, casting his eyes around room.

"Unless he actually wants us to find him." Jaime offered, without much conviction.

"I don't know how likely that is."

She felt a flare of anger - the same one she had been feeling for months. "Is this what always happens when people try to retire? They're hunted down like escaped criminals?"

"It's pretty awful, isn't it? Makes you wonder what we signed up for." Russ frowned thoughtfully. "I guess you didn't even really sign up like the rest of us, did you?" He opened a desk drawer, and idly examined the contents - paper clips, pens, a small knife, a wooden nickel. "They're going to think he's sold out. Honestly, Jaime, I don't know what he thinks he's doing. He knows full well he can't walk off the job, now or ever."

It never ceased to amaze her how bizarre the world of intelligence really was. "So are they going to do what they did to me?" she asked bitterly, "Put his mug in the paper saying he's wanted for armed robbery?"

"No, they can't do that - he's too prominent, and it would reflect badly on the whole government. They're going to keep it as quiet as possible."

"Do you think he really could give us the slip completely?" A persistent anxiety was nipping at her stomach.

"Well if anyone knows how to do it, it should be him. I guess we'll find out." Russ replied with an unhappy shrug. "Unfortunately Bill Parr is highly motivated when it comes to trying to best Oscar. " He looked tired and stressed, jingling his keys in his pocket.

"So... how worried are you?" She almost didn't want to hear the answer.

"I don't know. At best we'll find him on a beach in the Caribbean, and at worst - at the bottom of a river somewhere."

"Russ!"

"Sorry Jaime - but honestly, he's got enemies and a brain full of government secrets - he should be protected."

"For the rest of his life?"

"Yup." Russ answered. "But I'm also worried about his state of mind. I never would have guessed he'd do something like this."

"Yeah." Jaime nodded. It was the last thing she thought he would do, but on the other hand - what choice did he have? He was trapped - he would have to live out the rest of his life in the not so tender embrace of the OSI. His departure brought into sharp light her own recent attempted escape, filling her with uncertainty. If he felt strongly enough to disappear, should she have done the same?

"Well!" she said, forcing a positive tone into her voice. "I guess I'd better get at it. I've got to believe we'll find something. He needs us, whether he knows it or not."

Russ dug in his pocket and handed her a package of latex gloves. "For that left hand. You don't want to leave any fingerprints." he said. "I'd better go. I'm sorry to leave you to do this on your own - but I hope you know how much I appreciate it. I'm going to cough up the news at about four thirty this afternoon, and you should be out of here by five at the very latest. I'll come over tonight with some dinner and we can catch up."

"Great, Russ. Thanks for everything." She smiled, and gave him a hug

She started with the telephone bills, examining each one closely, hoping for a call, or series of calls, to some likely location - where ever that might be. Try as she might, she could not imagine exactly where Oscar Goldman would run to. It was a big world, and the possibilities were endless - well, not quite endless. Wherever he was, he'd want to be inconspicuous. This meant a lot of places were off limits, simply because he was tall. Having visited a number of countries with him, she knew he stood out like a sore thumb - even if he did speak the language. She found a couple of long distance calls to Colorado Springs, and a couple to her number in Ojai before she had retired. Of course, all his travel arrangements could easily have been made through local calls, which were not itemized. Perhaps she could get Russ to dig further.

Moving on to his credit card statements, she found that most of his expenditures were on restaurants. There was one at a tailor's and several at a bookstore. She couldn't help but let out a wistful chuckle when she found a slip of paper in between the two latest statements. Written in his familiar scrawl were the words, "Forget it. You won't find anything."

The desk was next. She went through it, drawer by drawer, once again finding it too tidy to be true. In the bottom drawer she found a shoe box full of photographs. It was odd that he kept it there - almost as though he needed to have it nearby. On top of the pile she was startled by her own face grinning back up at her. The photo was taken at last year's Christmas party. She was wearing that teal dress that she later decided was a mistake, and her arms were wrapped snugly around Oscar's waist. He had a gratified, if bemused smile on his face. The two of them formed the center of the composition, and crowding around them were the usual suspects - Rudy and Callahan, Lynda, Tony from accounting, Gordie the lab tech - a happy bunch. As tempting as it was to browse, she put the box back.

She wandered into the kitchen and poured herself a glass of water and went into his bedroom. What she needed was some sense of achievement - to get at least a couple of rooms eliminated from the search, and this seemed as good a place as any to start. It was a sleek room, simply furnished, with an large inviting bed and a nice view onto his private backyard. It was difficult not to feel invasive, and it made her tentative in her search. The bedroom was a part of Oscar's life she was entirely unacquainted with. She knew nothing of his love life, and he seemed intent on keeping it that way, though from what she could guess he had few secrets to keep. While she felt apologetic and nosy, she had to admit to herself that she was keenly interested in this room. He had always been so damned mysterious, and there is nothing that piques the curiosity like mystery. She opened the bedside table drawer, revealing a travel sewing kit, a button, a few coins, and a shoelace. The other one was much the same. Then she started on the dresser on the opposite wall. Interestingly not much was there, no socks, no underwear, no t-shirts. In the bottom drawer she did find a couple of very old things - some linens and lace, possibly his mother's, and two Navy dress uniforms, now not quite white anymore (his and Sam's?) She moved on to the closet, finding there all the suits she knew so well. She could picture him in each one, and the sight of them made her miss him keenly. She stepped into the closet, face to face with the first blazer, and began to methodically go through each and every one of the multitudes of pockets. There was an intimacy to this job that was both comforting and upsetting - she could smell his aftershave, and fishing around in his clothing, she felt downright forward. Every pocket in every jacket and every vest was empty, (save for one mint) which was odd in itself. Finally in the brown blazer she discovered a slip of paper that read "Gomez - 17:15" Her pulse quickened - this had to be something important. She grabbed the datacom, reported to Russ, and received his assurances that he would follow up right away. Pensively, she dropped the piece of paper onto the bed and stared at it a moment, as though it would give up more secrets if she looked at it long enough. And in a way, it did. Torn from a note pad, the paper was wrinkled in such a way that it looked as though it had been crushed once and flattened out. It was not worn - it had not traveled long in that pocket. Of course he could have written it down late in the day, come home, and taken the jacket off. But then there was the writing - it was more legible than usual, and therefore suspicious. She decided right then. He had planted it.

She completed her search of both bedrooms, and finding nothing more of note she was able to eliminate them from her hunt. It was now 3:30, and she was starving. As much as she wanted to slip back through the tunnel for food and coffee, she had to keep going. It seemed clear that he had intentionally not left any real clues, so she changed her search. She pulled the fridge and stove out, looked behind sets of drawers and under furniture, flipped through magazine piles - but found not one forgotten scrap of paper, not one lousy hint.

Then there was a garage out back - she was going to have to look in there, too. After checking for any signs of surveillance outside, she slipped out and tried the garage door, hoping it was open. It wasn't, naturally, and as she wasn't in a mood to go on a key hunt, she cranked it open. Inside there was a workbench, plenty of tools, and boxes on shelves along the side. Would she really have to go through those...?, she wondered, feeling weak. The car was gone. The only sign of recent activity was a sanding project at the workbench. He seemed to have been refinishing a chair - though why he would bother with this one she couldn't understand. It was a wreck of a wooden chair, perhaps twenty years old, and there was nothing about it to suggest it was worthy of such attention. It was almost completely sanded down, but not quite. She backed out, closing the door behind her. She would only come back as a last resort.

As the day drew to a close, she became panicky - she had nothing real to show for her efforts and the NSB would be moving in tonight. A few minutes before five, Russ called with a warning to clear out, so she slipped back down the rabbit hole and back to her little apartment, frustrated and shaky with hunger

Russ showed up an hour later, also frustrated and shaky, but for different reasons. Oscar's disappearance did indeed cause the firestorm he was expecting, and, also as expected, the NSB had demanded control of the investigation and ordered the OSI to stay completely out of it.

"They're all up in arms." he reported. "The President, the VP, the Secretaries - and if they weren't in a lather before, Parr made sure they were by the time he'd finished with them. He made a resignation sound like an act of sedition."

Jaime groaned, and clapped her hand to her forehead.

"They think he's done something underhanded - and that he's running so he won't be caught."

"That's ridiculous!"

"I'll say." If Russ looked worried this morning, he looked close to frantic now. "And it also means they're now going over all OSI business with a fine tooth comb, which is going to make my life a living hell. Did you come up with anything else?" he queried anxiously.

She shook her head. "Anything come up with that Gomez thing?"

"Yeah. An "Olivier Gomez" got on a plane to Buenos Aires at five o'clock on Saturday."

"Olivier Gomez! It's got to be a decoy. It's just too obvious."

"That's what I thought."

Russ sat down at the kitchen table, pulling open containers of Chinese food while Jaime retrieved plates and cutlery, her mouth watering. When she turned back from the cupboard, he was staring out the window, holding a box of rice.

"Did you know I started out at the NSB?" he said, turning to her.

She sat down opposite him, suddenly interested. "No, I didn't."

"I was there for about a year. I hated it. I went in, full of ideals, wanting to do a good job, help my country and all that, and all I got was resistance. The place was full of people who would do anything to get ahead - including denigrating anyone they found threatening, or taking credit for other peoples' work and other peoples' ideas. Just when I was seriously reconsidering my career choice, Oscar took me aside and asked me if I wanted to come and work for him. I don't know how he spotted me because I'd only met him about three times, but he's like that, you know? He has great instincts about people. And he knows how to navigate the politics of the job without losing sight of what's important." He paused, set the rice down and absentmindedly pried open the lid. "He always tries to do the right thing. Do you know how hard that gets to be? Seeing the forest for the trees in this business? Don't get me wrong, he drives me nuts, but fundamentally I have nothing but respect for him. Guys like Parr get to the top through burning ambition and backstabbing. Oscar is the soul of the OSI. If he's gone...well, I don't know if I can do what he does."

Though Jaime shared his fears, she put her hand on his and patted it reassuringly. "Oh, Russ, I know this has got to be terrifying for you, but if it comes to it you can do it. Oscar had - has - a lot of confidence in you. He picked you for a reason you know."

"Well, thanks, Jaime. That means a lot coming from you." Russ smiled tentatively. "See...you're a great example. Parr or Hansen could never have got someone like you - because you've got too much integrity, too much heart. Like Oscar."

"Thanks. What a nice thing to say." she replied quietly, feeling an intertwined sense of pleasure and pain in her chest. "I just can't believe..." She found she couldn't finish the sentence. There was no need anyway.

"I've got some really big shoes to fill." Russ sighed.

"Literally." Jaime said, with a laugh, squeezing his hand.

As they dug into their dinner, less than a block away, five NSB agents began their intensive search of Oscar's house. Now Jaime would have to wait, like an anxious racehorse at the starter gate, until they had completed their investigation.


	3. Chapter 3

It ended up being three days - three days that felt like six. Twice she put on her frump disguise and went out window shopping or to a cafe, but she felt so conspicuous in that ridiculous wig she quickly retreated back to the apartment, to pace and fret the time away. What if the NSB uncovered and removed every single clue from that house? What if they found him first - what would they do with him? Would they shoot him when they saw him?_ Surely not...?_ Would they bring him back in handcuffs claiming treason? Would they put him in that stupid retirement community they'd threatened her with? The minute Oscar had described that place to her she had envisioned it as a a nursing home, and the very thought of it made her shudder. She was not usually prone to paranoia, but having just been through her own extremely unsettling experience with the American government, she was jumpy - to say the least. No matter what happened - even if she found Oscar and convinced him to come home, Bill Parr would most certainly try to use his disappearance to discredit him. Could it be that Oscar's days at the OSI were truly over?

To while the time away, she forced herself to sit down and watch television, but it wasn't as captivating as she needed it to be. She tried jogging on the spot and doing push ups, and that helped to settle the jitters a little. Adding to her frustration was the fact that she was killing time in DC when she could have been teaching back home. She was haunted by the thought of Kevin Melnyck - a boy in her class who had been having difficulties lately. He was a painfully serious boy who worked so hard she worried he might explode from the pressure he put on himself. He was entirely preoccupied with doing everything right (not an uncommon problem with children of military personnel, but Kevin was an acute case), and she had tried to get him to ease up on himself, but without much luck. About three weeks ago he had not done as well as usual on a chemistry exam, and then didn't return from lunch break. When Jaime called his home and found he wasn't there she got worried, and had coerced the principal into watching her class while she tore all over the base looking for him. She found him a couple of hours later at a dead end road near the railway tracks, pelting a "No Trespassing" sign with rocks, tears streaming down his face. It wasn't just the exam, of course - it was his parents. They were getting divorced, and he clearly felt it was all his fault. He hadn't done everything right. She'd spent a lot of time since then trying to convince him that he wasn't responsible, and had lined him up with the school counselor - but right now he was sitting in her class staring at yet another substitute teacher, and she only hoped he was doing all right.

Finally she was rescued from her broodings by Agatha Christie. There wasn't very much reading material in the house (the place had the feel of being nobody's real home) but there were at least two dozen of her mystery novels on a shelf in the bedroom. Some of them Jaime had read before, but most were new to her. There was something so deliciously comforting about the Christie universe, even though it was filled with characters she would likely never meet in real life - estate owning English people who kept servants and worried about them stealing the silver. And then of course, there were all those murders - but they were so abstract and so tidy they weren't the slightest bit upsetting.

As it only took her about four hours to read one, she was able to get through six before she became utterly satiated and convinced she never wanted to read another for as long as she lived. One of the things that finally irked her most was that no matter how hard she tried, she could _never_ figure out who the murderer was - and if she wasn't clever enough to figure out an Agatha Christie novel, how was she ever going to read clues well enough to find a real life espionage expert like Oscar? Russ finally called her late on the third day by datacom to tell her that the NSB was out. They would likely return a few times so she'd have to keep her ear on high alert, but he thought she was pretty much safe.

What she found in Oscar's apartment made her angry - it was like a twister had been through the place. Did they really have the right to do this? It was demoralizing, to say the least. Chaos is hard to deal with. Deeply discouraged, she picked her way through the mess aimlessly, wondering where to begin.

Among the contents of his desk that had been removed from the drawers was the box of photos. She decided now would be a good moment to go through them as she needed an incentive to ease herself back into this daunting project. Sitting in his big leather chair, she put the box in her lap, and began to examine them one by one. There were a lot of work related pictures - Oscar at the UN, Oscar with presidents and other high ranking officials of the US government, with Rudy at the sites of big projects - these didn't interest her so much. This was how she saw him all the time. What caught her eye first was a black and white portrait of the boss as a young man - startlingly handsome, glowing with carefree youth. She suppressed the urge to steal it. People always look happy in photographs. If one were to judge by this box of pictures, Oscar's life (up until the photos with presidents) looked like one big lark - particularly while he was in the Navy. Then there were the family pictures. There was a particularly charming one - maybe taken in the back yard - his tall mother, (Oscar resembled her most) his father, slightly shorter, his sister, about ten, scowling in a print dress, Sam, a confident teenager next to her, his hands placed on the shoulders of his very small dark haired brother, smiling shyly in the foreground, wearing shorts, one ankle bent to the outside, his arms hanging loosely.

Why was she so surprised and then put out when she found photos of women in the pile? There seemed to be two significant ones, each featured in a handful of snapshots. In what seemed to be the most recent (five years ago, perhaps?) there was one of Oscar and a nice looking brunette standing by a car together, casually dressed, grinning at the photographer, and another of the same woman reading a magazine, stretched out comfortably on the couch. These hit her hard. What an irony it was - getting to know the elusive Oscar Goldman in a way she had never been able to before - but for her to get to acquainted in this way he had to be absent.

With great reluctance she put down the box an hour later, and surveyed the room. Time to get to it. It occurred to her to pull the drawers right out of the desk. It was a bit of a wrestling match, but she succeeded by tilting each drawer up and then down to pull it off the rails. Her efforts were rewarded on the shallow top drawer. There was a crumpled brochure that had obviously become jammed up top. It was for a hotel in the south of France - _Manoir Le Cavalier. _Once again, Jaime's heart began to race. Once again, she called Russ, who promised to look into it.

She stood, hands on her hips, and contemplated what to do next. The brochure was certainly not going to be enough. She would have to keep looking. The one thing the NSB had left untouched was the books. She gazed up at the shelves looking behind the desk, filled with history books, biology, chemistry and physics books, multiple biographies of each of the Presidents of the twentieth century, art books, the collected works of William Shakespeare, the writings of Winston Churchill, the latest by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, dictionaries, atlases, thesauruses. She thought of a story her mother had told her - of her great-uncle, a farmer. He was a long way from wealthy, but after he died, when the family was going through his belongings, they found at least a hundred checks hidden away in books. Checks for livestock sales, for debts owed to him - and he had never cashed them. Her mother had discovered it by accident when she paused to flip through a book she was about to box and found a very old check for a thousand dollars right in the middle. Though Jaime would never imagine Oscar to be guilty of such eccentricity, perhaps it was worth a look. She started methodically at the top, flipping through each and every one. When she quit at midnight, she had found absolutely nothing. Then to her frustration, she continued the search that night in her dreams, page after page flipping before her eyes.

Russ called first thing in the morning to report that _Manoir LeCavalier _had gone out of business two years ago. Another red herring.

Back she went to her ridiculous book search, feeling discouraged. Oscar was nothing like her great uncle after all, but right now it was the only thing she could think to do. She hadn't discovered anything before the NSB tornado had blasted through, and now her chances of finding anything were even slimmer. Three hours later she had gone through all the books on the left hand side of his desk and was feeling cross eyed and irritable. It was at this point she arrived at the atlases - naturally there were three of them. _Why didn't I start here?_ she wondered, rolling her eyes. Frustration had made her dull witted. As atlas might actually yield something, unlike the complete works of Charles Dickens, which she had just gone through. Of course this would have to be a much more detailed search - she would have to keep her eyes open for the tiniest chicken scratches - a line here or there to suggest a route, or if he wanted to be helpful, a big red circle with arrows pointing to it. She flipped through the first one, performed a rousing set of jumping jacks and one headstand, and moved to the second atlas. She was actually beyond feeling hopeless - her movements were mechanical, her mind dull.

It was page forty seven that stopped her in her tracks. She could so easily have missed it, but her eyes happened to stop on that spot on the page. The blood rushed into her ears and she stopped breathing. There it was -_ exactly_ what she had been looking for. Just a tiny dot. Just one. Only a desperate fool would fix their hopes on it - but this had to be it. She could feel it.

Fumbling for the datacom, triumphant and disbelieving, she called Russ.

"I've got it Russ. I'll check in with you in a couple of days." Without waiting for his response, she blurted, "Wish me luck." and hung up. Grabbing a good likeness of Oscar from his box of photos, she headed back to her apartment. _A rat on a mission_ she thought, scrambling through her tunnel. She swiftly packed a small suitcase, jammed the frumpy wig onto her head, grabbed her fake ID and called a cab. She looked like the secretary for a TV evangelist. Her enthusiasm was dampened somewhat when she learned it would take four flights to get to her destination, and it would take most of the day. This whole thing was a lesson in patience, she decided. She had already demonstrated more patience flipping through those damned books than she thought was possible, and sitting around on airplanes was not going to kill her.

Staring out the window of the plane as they taxied out, she noted a feeling of excitement, and that this feeling, (usually along with a heavy dose of trepidation) was something that always accompanied her on missions. Did this mean she was missing her OSI work? 

_No way_.

After the first flight the TV evangelist's secretary outfit was no longer necessary, so she dumped the wig in the bathroom at O' Hare airport and boarded the next plane feeling lighter and less duplicitous.

At seven that evening, the plane touched down at her final destination - the tiny airport of Kalispell, Montana. The only thing she could think to do when staying overnight in an unfamiliar town was to drive downtown, and she found there a charming, if somewhat rough old west style main street, lined with false fronted brick buildings, housing questionable looking bars, antique shops, western wear stores and lawyers' offices. Then she came upon the Kalispell Grand Hotel, a solid sandstone edifice with reasonable rates. After checking in, she threw her suitcase down in her room and made her way to the huge dining room, where she ate a decent steak dinner with only the waitresses to keep her company.

Somewhere in the middle of the meal, she bit down on something that felt a lot like a pebble, and before she could call the waitress to complain, a pain in her jaw signaled tooth trouble. Examining her molars with her tongue, she quickly found a hole where tooth used to be. This was an inconvenient development to say the least. Fortunately the pain subsided fairly quickly, and she ordered a glass of red wine to console herself. She couldn't imagine finding - or wanting to find - a dentist on this trip. She liked and trusted her guy back home, and so hoped the tooth would hold up till she got back.

The next morning, having carefully avoided chewing anywhere near her touchy molar during breakfast, she hit the road in relatively good spirits. It was both an incredible thrill and an awful shock when she caught sight of the lake for the first time - a huge, sparkling, gloriously inviting sheet of blue, surrounded by high golden hills dotted with ponderosa pines. She had imagined driving around the whole thing in about 20 minutes, but it was clear this was not to be. Such a crazy name - "Flathead". Where did that come from? At least she had her first hunch to go with - a town called "Somers" right at the top of the lake. It was impossibly vain that she would imagine that Oscar might take up residence in a town called Somers with her in mind, but there it was, the closest town and the most obvious place to start.

Somers was tiny, much of it composed of small wooden houses in varying states of charm and repair, and one big yellow mansion that looked like a wedding cake perched high up on the rocks overlooking the lake. The main street consisted of a hardware store, a corner store, and a bar. The bar was closed until noon, but she showed Oscar's photograph in the other two places, receiving solemn shakes of the head in each.

"Whatcha looking for him for?" asked the ruddy, stout woman who ran the grocery store.

"He's my cousin." Jaime said evenly, "and I've been charged to find him because Grandpa just died and he's coming into some money."

"Well, good luck to you!" the woman answered, with some enthusiasm. "He'll be happy when you find him."

"He sure will." Jaime replied, as much to convince herself as anything.

She hung around the town for the next couple of hours, waiting for the bar to open, asking random people about Oscar, to no avail. With an hour yet to kill she made her way down to a public beach and tested the glacial waters. So clear - and so very, very cold. It was May, but the air still carried the fresh chill of the thaw. At noon, she tramped back to the bar, and finding no satisfaction there, she got back in the car and back onto the highway south. The drill was the same in the next two tiny towns, and she came up empty handed in both. Not permitting dejection to cloud her spirits, she headed back to Kalispell for the night. She would get right to the south end of the lake tomorrow.

Her first destination the next day was Rollins, a town so nondescript that except for its proximity to the lake, she couldn't have described it ten minutes after leaving it. The next two towns were much the same. Despite the distinctive names - Elmo and Big Arm, they were poor and charmless, sitting bare and exposed at the point where the rocky yellow hills rushed down to the water. She couldn't imagine anyone - much less Oscar, who presumably had his pick - staying here. She began to wonder if she had made a terrible error.

Still, she pressed on doggedly. She had begun to use that term to fortify herself when she was feeling unsure. At the first sign of doubt, she would say to herself, _Don't forget - you're dogged._

It was with some relief that she reached the town of Polson that evening. It wasn't exactly bustling, but there were at least a couple thousand people here, and it had the friendly feel that accompanies faded resort towns. She checked into yet another elderly brick hotel, close to the lake, and immediately headed to the dining room. There had been no restaurants in the little towns she had visited today, and she was starving. Eating was a delicate affair. She ordered only soft foods, and let them cool before venturing to try them. Red wine, always reliably at room temperature, was the perfect accompaniment.

There was not much for her to do that evening. She quizzed her waiter and a few other people on the street showing them Oscar's photo - to no avail, but that was all she could do - the stores were closed, and, being a Sunday night, so was the bar. _Would he even haunt a bar? _There were too many open questions in this search. Had she ever really known Oscar at all? She ambled the wide streets for a while, and then upon discovering the local movie theater, immediately decided to spend the evening under the spell of "Grease". There was absolutely no chance she would find Oscar in there, but then again, would she find him anywhere?

The next morning she began her rounds - the two grocery stores, the hardware store, the shoe store, the mechanic, the post office - all to no avail. She wasn't feeling so dogged anymore, just frustrated and worried. This was looking like a wild goose chase, even if she did still have half the lake to go. A dark mistrust of her instincts was gnawing at her - who in their right mind would fly from Washington to Montana based on one dot of a ball point pen?

Around two in the afternoon, she spied an old fashioned soda counter through the window of the stationary store, and decided this was just the thing to cheer her up. Feeling dejected, she threw herself onto a stool with a big sigh.

"What can I do for you?" asked a smiling elderly man with a white brush cut and horn rimmed glasses.

"Your best soda please."

There was one other person at the counter, a lumpen middle aged character sipping his coffee and staring at the pattern on the counter. Though she was beginning to feel like a parrot constantly repeating the same lines, Jaime took the photo out of her pocket and slid it in his direction.

"Have you seen this guy?" she asked. "He's my cousin and I have to find him."

The man cautiously placed his index finger on the picture, slid it toward himself, and squinted at it. He then sat back and opened his eyes wide, as if to pry the lids apart. Finally he took a pair of glasses from his breast pocket and put them on.

"Oh sure." he said, in the most casual manner. Jaime nearly fell off her stool. "What's that guy's name? Funny name..." he muttered. "Felix - that's it. He's Lyle's new man down at the marina."

Jaime felt adrenaline course up from her stomach to the top of her head. "The marina? Where do I find it?" she asked, getting to her feet.

"Well, by the water, little lady." The man's eyes twinkled mischievously. "Get back on the highway through town going south, and take a left on Second. Lyle's is down at the bottom there."

"Oh, thank you!" Jaime gushed, suppressing the urge to kiss the man, "I'm so grateful!" She quickly produced two dollars from her purse and slapped it on the counter. "Can't wait!" she said. "Gotta run...sorry!"


	4. Chapter 4

She would later have no memory of the trip to the marina - probably she was a road hazard. Within a minute she pulled up in front of a strange little corrugated tin clad building with "Lyle's Boat Repair" hand painted on the side. She took a deep breath, pushed the door open, and walked in. The office was stuffy and grubby, and smelled of motor oil, varnish, and sawdust. A girly calender and a map of the lake were the only adornment on the walls.

"Hallo!" a friendly voice called before she spotted the person attached to it. "What can I do for you?" A small, rounded man rose up from his seat behind the counter.

"I'm looking for Felix?" she said, uncertainly. Had he really used the name Felix? Did this mean he was a fan of _The Odd Couple_? This was all so unlikely - it had to be a mistake. The guy at the soda counter probably had it wrong. People were actually poor at spotting likenesses, Jaime had noticed. They were easily fooled by haircuts and glasses.

"Sure." said the man pleasantly, "I'll get him for you." and he exited heavily through the door opposite to the one that she had come though - the one that lead to the lake and the docks.

It seemed like a long wait, though it couldn't have been more than three minutes. Instinctively, Jaime turned so that she could easily see both doors and the single window between them. Sure enough, she saw a tall figure slip past the high window, peering in briefly. He opened the front door a moment later, a man Oscar's height, but so different in appearance it took Jaime a moment to recognize him. He had a new beard, which extended up his cheeks and down his neck in an unkempt, un-Oscar Goldman kind of way. He was wearing dusty old horn rimmed glasses - ones that she had seen him wearing in old pictures in the photo box, and a filthy, loose fitting blue jumpsuit - the kind mechanics wear.

Along with the thrill and relief of seeing him alive and well, and the pure satisfaction of having found him on the slimmest of clues, she registered at that moment what a handsome man Oscar really was, because he was so particularly un-handsome at this moment.

He stood in the doorway, his expression nothing short of horrified. "What are you doing here?"

"Hi...Felix." Jaime replied, with a suggestion of mischief.

Giving Lyle a preemptive "don't ask" glance, he took her by the elbow and hauled her outside, making sure the office door was shut firmly behind him.

"What are you doing here?" he demanded brusquely.

"What am I doing here? I think the bigger question is what are _you _doing here?" Being highly sensitive to other people's moods, she was getting rattled fast.

"Who's with you?"

"No one is with me. I came on my own."

"I want you to go, right now. You never saw me."

Now she was getting angry. "If you think I have spent all this time tracking you down to leave without so much as a howdy-do from you, you have another -"

"You're sure you're alone?" he interrupted, glancing around.

"Yes!"

Nobody knows you're here? Not Parr, not Russ, Rudy, anybody?"

"Nobody."

"There's no chance you were followed?"

"None!" she replied, offended by the inquisition. "Come on. I'm a well trained professional, remember?"

He exhaled through his nose and looked at her peevishly.

"All right." he snapped. "We can talk for half an hour, but that's it. I've got to finish up a job I've got going, and I'll meet you at my cabin."

He pulled a scrap of paper and pen from his breast pocket. Holding the paper in the palm of his hand, he drew a rough map, poking holes in the paper as he went.

"Get back on the highway going south. Take King's Point road, go right onto Acacia Lane and follow it to the end. You'll know my place by the sign on a tree by the driveway that says Hocksteader. It's open." He jammed the paper into her hand, gave her a baleful look, and turned away.

Lyle peered out at the exchange through the dirty window, scuttling backward as Oscar returned to the office. Planting himself in Oscar's path, he fixed him with a critical gaze.

"Now what kind of guy greets a beautiful woman in that way?"

"I've got work to do, Lyle." Oscar replied tersely as he attempted to pass. His expression was fierce, his face red.

"Y'know, I see this all the time with you footloose guys." Lyle said with a partly philosophical, partly critical air. "You spend your lives running around, avoiding reality, responsibility. But I tell you, one of these days you're gonna get tired of running, and you're going to wish you had family. In fact I would have thought by your age you'd have figured that out by now."

"It's complicated." Oscar snapped.

"That's what you boys always say. You oughta try it. A little responsibility. It would do you some good."

Oscar drew up to his full height, and fixed his boss with a steely glare. "I'll take that under advisement. I'd like to get back to that motor, if you don't mind."

Not for the first time in the week since Felix started work, Lyle felt his authority waver and fall. Despite his nomadic ways (he told Lyle he had spent much of his life working all over Washington state) and apparent lack of ambition, there was something commanding about Felix Hall. Lyle never quite felt like the boss when he was around him. Had he been even remotely insubordinate as an employee, he probably would have fired him. "Sure, sure. Good man." he murmured, and stepped out of his way.

Jaime found the place easily, though navigating the heavily rutted dirt lane down to the cabin proved to be somewhat hair raising. As soon as she stepped out of the car the world was transformed into something better. It was so perfectly serene. The wooden cabin was a simple structure with a screened in porch, painted dark brown. It was nestled comfortably among the tall ponderosa pines, which made a hushed rushing noise in the breeze that swept overhead. The big lake was rough and blue, the shore about thirty feet beyond the porch, tantalizing through the trees. Perhaps best of all was the vivid smell of pine needles and dry grass that scented the crystal air. What to do first - go down to the lake or look in the cabin? She quickly decided on the latter, her natural nosiness getting the better of her. She passed through the porch, the screen door slapping behind her, and into the dark interior. There was a small and somewhat primitive kitchen, furnished with appliances built in the fifties, that lead a living room with high ceilings, bare wood walls, and stone fireplace with a poorly painted portrait of an Indian chief hanging above it. It smelled pleasantly of woodsmoke. Again, most of the furnishings looked as though they had been placed there sometime between the thirties and the fifties. Oscar's presence was easily discerned. There were some books and newspapers in neat piles around a comfortable chair by the fire, a sweater slung over the arm - but that was it. The rest of his life was back in Washington. She peered into the bedroom (separated from the living room by a curtain) and found his bed, neatly made, and more books stacked on an orange crate that served as an end table. Amongst the shirts and khakis hanging in the makeshift closet was a single dark gray three piece suit - her favorite.

Back outside again, she followed the dirt path which lead from the back porch to a broad, horseshoe shaped pebble beach, and an old dock that was almost completely drifted over by rocks. Green, red, gold, the pebbles were beautifully colored and mostly flat - perfect for skipping. She tried out one or two, but the rough water subdued the stones after two or three skips. Given some calm water, she could achieve minor rock skipping miracles with that bionic arm. Before long she settled at the edge of the dock, her feet dangling a few inches above the shallow water, the cool lapping calming her mind. Somehow the ache in her tooth diminished and the frosty reception she had received from Oscar seemed less upsetting. She couldn't even bring herself to worry about Kevin Melnyck. She must have been there better part of the hour, staring at the view, inhaling the vast open Montana air, the smell of clean water, and she thought she might like to stay there in that moment forever, and simply suspend this crazy business of trying to figure out one's friends and one's life. She was startled from her reverie by the sound of the screen door slapping behind her. Either the NSB was about to swoop down on her, or Oscar was home. She made her way up to the cabin, coming face to face with him at the screen door. She had never seen him looking more ill tempered.

"How the _hell _did you find me?"

"Hello Oscar. I'm glad to see you too."

He sighed darkly and beckoned her in. "How?" he demanded.

Though she was offended by his tone, she decided there was nothing to be achieved by questioning his manners. "One of your three atlases. A little ballpoint pen dot right here on Flathead lake." She couldn't help but be proud of herself for finding him, and under different circumstances, he would have been proud of her too. She decided not to mention the "Somers" connection.

"God damn it, I trained you too well." He shook his head in frustration. "Where's the NSB?"

They're looking for Olivier Gomez in Buenos..."

"Why do I even bother to ask?" he interrupted, "I'm sure they'll be here any minute, thanks to you."

"No they won't." Jaime replied indignantly, stung again by the insult to her professionalism. "If they find you it's because they'll decide the name 'Olivier Gomez' is so obvious."

"I know what I'm doing. Bill Parr couldn't find the lint in his own navel if he wasn't told where to look. Besides, I sent a second trail to Australia as back up." Again he fixed her with a hostile stare as they passed into the living room. "But I'm sure they're keeping a very close eye on you right now."

"They think I'm in Dubai. Russ helped me - but even he doesn't know where I am."

This failed to appease him. He paced the perimeter of the room, looking as agitated as she had ever seen him, gripping the back of his neck with one hand, while she stood uneasily in the center. He stopped in front of her, his eyes dark with anger, his chin jutting.

"My _last_ order as the Director of the OSI and you couldn't just do me the favor of following it? For once?"

Under normal circumstances, Jaime knew Oscar found it difficult to be truly angry with her. His shouts had a hollow ring to them and his reproofs were tentative. Not this time. She was caught between two impulses - fight or flight. Already hurt and quickly becoming furious, she decided on the former.

"Not when it's an order like that!" she replied, her voice sounding injured and wobbly. "You can't just choose to fall off the face of the earth, you know. You of all people. You could have been kidnapped, for all we knew - "

"Kidnapped!" Oscar scoffed, rolling his eyes.

"Or you could have had a break down!" Jaime continued angrily, "and there's always the possibility that if the wrong people find out you're hiding out in Montana they'll come and get you! Everybody is worried sick! Russ, Callahan - Rudy was almost in tears when I spoke to him."

"Ah!" Oscar waved his hand dismissively. "Rudy always gets fussy over change. Bring in new office chairs and he can't think straight for a week!"

"You're his best friend! How can you be so callous? This is not the behavior of the Oscar Goldman I know."

"It was for the best."

"The best?!" she repeated incredulously, spitting out the words. "I don't understand - the OSI is your life, your baby - and then you just up and disappear?"

"Jaime, I find it a little ironic that you of all people is saying this to me."

"Well, maybe it is, but I would_ never_ have abandoned everyone who cares about me without a word!"

"Well let me explain it to you then." he replied, hands on his hips. "Sure, the OSI is my baby, and that makes me everybody's _Daddy_." He spat out the last word. "And Daddy's supposed to fix everything and have all the answers, and be infinitely patient and tolerant and understanding. And when I somehow fail to be all these things, then suddenly I'm the goat. Incompetent, stupid, traitorous, take your pick! You live under that pressure and see how long you last! Well, it's time for the fledglings to leave the nest. I'm not looking after anybody anymore."

The truth of his words struck her and she found herself reaching for his arm as a gesture of acknowledgement. He backed away.

"You especially. I don't like playing Daddy to you - to your rebellious teenager routine. I hate being put in that role. _Hate_ it, do you understand me?"

"What?!" Jaime spluttered. "I have _never _put you in that role. If you're talking about my attempted retirement, I was just trying to get my own life back, and if that's being a rebellious teenager, then so be it! How dare you?!" Even as the words left her mouth she wondered if he might have a point.

"And while we're on the subject of you," he said, looking even angrier - if that were possible, "if you want this so-called "normal" life you keep talking about, you are going to have to stop _rescuing_ people!"

"What?!" she spluttered again, "What are you talking about?"

"You're here to rescue me."

"What? What are you...? I wanted to know what happened to you!"

"It's not the OSI that wore you out, Jaime. It's _you_."

"I beg your pardon?!" A hot anger flooded her brain. "YOU'RE the one who gave me every assignment under the sun. YOU overworked me. Badly!"

"Yes I did." he admitted, though his tone didn't suggest much of a concession. "But almost every single time I tried to pull you out of some dangerous situation, you'd resist - because you had to go _save_ someone! Chris Stuart - pretending to be your mother - I bet you still write to her, don't you? Or Lisa Galloway - have you visited her lately? And there are dozens more shady characters in your roster of humanitarian projects - people you tried to fix and and save and so that everything would be happy and shiny. Sometimes life doesn't work that way, and you ought to know that by now."

"You're a fine one to be telling me this! I may try to save the occasional individual, but you're the one who has to save the whole damned world all the time."

"Well then I know what I'm talking about, don't I?" he answered peevishly. Jaime registered a slight shake in his hand as he gestured.

"This is ridiculous." she fumed. "Why are we talking about me when it's _you_ who is currently the fugitive?"

"Jaime, I didn't tell you my plans - on purpose. I didn't want you trying to fix everything for me. I also figured if you were serious about your 'normal' new life, you wouldn't go running after your almost ex-boss. And what do you know? Here you are."

"You are a lot more than a boss to me!"

"Did anyone else feel compelled to - I assume - spend days going through my personal belongings so that they could hunt me down? Callahan? Rudy?"

"Oscar!" she blurted, feeling pinned.

"Russ didn't ask you to come, did he?"

"I came because I care about you!"

"Did he?!" Jaime grit her teeth and didn't answer. "I know you care." Oscar continued. "But you didn't _want_ to get on that plane, did you? The whole idea made you feel tired. I bet you even felt angry at me. And now you've got some substitute installed in your classroom, don't you? Just because you can't resist a crisis."

"You make it sound like a criminal act." she protested, the injustice of his accusations causing her eyes to sting.

"What do you think the NSB is going to do to me anyway? At worst they'll drag me back to Washington in handcuffs and then I'll have the infinite pleasure of suing them from hell to breakfast! And what's really going to happen is that in a month the Secretary will ask Bill Parr why he's wasting resources hunting a guy who hasn't done anything wrong, and they'll stop. And it will all be over - WITHOUT your angelic intervention."

She resisted the urge to bleat out a limp protest. She sat down, feeling badly shaken. "I was truly worried. I don't know what those people will do. Russ was worried too, you know. He thinks you should be protected."

"Anonymity is the only protection I want, and you have likely ruined it for me. When one person knows your secret, it's not a secret anymore."

He let out a heavy, frustrated sigh, disappeared into the kitchen and to her surprise, returned with two beers, and handed one to her. It seemed like some sort of reluctant peace offering, though he still looked furious. The veins in his neck were standing out and his forehead was red. She didn't really want a beer, but somehow she couldn't refuse. Perhaps she was afraid he would tear another strip off her.

"If you really wanted to quit the OSI so you could 'find yourself' you'd better start looking a little harder." He walked to the fireplace and leaned heavily against the mantle. "If you think you're going to be happy in a classroom from nine to three every day, living some kind of dull domestic dream behind your little white picket fence, you're wrong."

Nothing made her madder than being patronized - and that was exactly what he was doing. "So which is it Oscar? Since you seem to have me all figured out." she said hotly, glaring at him, "Rebellious teenager or pathological rescuer? I don't see how I can be both."

"Why don't you think about it? Maybe you'll figure it out." he taunted.

"WHY ARE YOU SO MAD AT ME?!" she yelled.

"YOU SHOULDN'T HAVE COME!" He slammed his fist on the mantelpiece.

"Call me a sentimental fool, but I thought you might be glad to see me!"

He glared at her a moment."All right." he said hotly. "You want to know why? You really want to know?"

"Of course I want to know!"

"It's so obvious, Jaime. In Ojai I told you I loved you, but that's not the whole truth. I am IN love with you. I've been in love with you for years, and when you're in love with someone and they don't love you back, finally you get a little pissed off about it. It's not fair, I know, but it's human nature. I can't help it. You weren't even supposed to know."

His words left her light headed and gasping for air - and entirely unable to make an adequate response. A declaration of love from an angry man is a confusing thing. "Who says I don't_..."_

"Don't try platitudes!" Oscar warned, waving his finger at her. "Just pack up your little life preserver and go home to that luncheon meat boyfriend of yours!"

"Luncheon meat?!" she said incredulously. She couldn't begin to know what emotion was on top of the pile. She was indignant, she was touched, she was rattled, her heart was pounding. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"_Luncheon meat._" he repeated, as though it should be self evident. "Take it off the menu and nobody notices. You sure know how to pick 'em, Jaime. Year after year I've watched you get enamored with one nincompoop after another. And I'm not talking about Steve. And THEN what do you do? You land on Chris Williams - mediocrity personified! He'll get a gold watch after he retires and everyone will have forgotten him the next day."

"What a horrible thing to say! This is not you saying this!"

"Oh, it's me all right. Just being honest for a change."

"Well that is not fair!" Jaime cried, feeling defensive of Chris and every other man she'd dated in the last three years. "Apparently I can't do anything right!" And then she added, "You're just JEALOUS!"

"Of course I'm jealous!"

"Well what am I supposed to do, Oscar? You know damned well that you could have made a move a hundred times over - We've been flirting with each other for years!" She had lost count of the times he had looked at her adoringly, glimmering with sexual longing - and she was sure she had returned the compliment (he had an incredible allure when he put his mind to it) but nothing ever, ever came of it. And then he would shut it down so fast she would wonder if she had imagined it.

"I couldn't! You know I couldn't!"

"Well, neither could I! So what do you want me to do - join a convent? For real? For heaven's sake, Oscar!"

"YES!" he bellowed.

Jaime raised her arms in the air in sheer frustration and dropped them again with a heavy sigh. "This is ridiculous. I'm damned if I do and damned if I don't."

"I told you it wasn't fair." he said, slumping onto the ancient couch and covering his eyes with his hand. They sat silent, both shocked at what was easily the most forceful confrontation they had ever had.

"You were not in this state the last time I saw you. What the hell happened to you?" she asked indignantly.

"After you decided to come back," he replied, his eyes dark and still far from friendly, "and we were sitting in Renshaw's office, negotiating the conditions of your return, you said 'My work for the OSI is primarily negative' and that hit me like a ton of bricks. The work I've dedicated my life to is a negative to you. That means _I'm_ a negative to you. And here I've always been under the impression that we've done great and important work together, and not only that, you've always made me happy. Somehow everything was better when you were around, and that remark devastated me."

"Oh God, I'm sorry. I didn't..."

"You _did_ mean it."

"No, that's not what I was going to say. Absolutely the last thing I wanted to do was to hurt you. We have done great work and you make me happy too - if you want to know the truth when I go on missions most of the time I'm not doing it for the American government, I'm doing it for _you_. Because I can't bear to let you down."

This stopped him for a moment. He blinked hard and looked down. "Well, problem is I realized you were right - despite all that warm fuzzy crap Renshaw spouted about how you remind us that we're human - the plain fact was that the people I work for would throw you into a zoo for the rest of your life - _you_ - and it made me wonder what I'd been doing for the last thirty years, working in this sick system - supporting it - when it was ultimately cold, self serving, stupid."

"Is that when you decided to get out?" Her words were quiet and careful, but her mind was racing. She was gripping the neck of the beer bottle as though she intended to throttle it. Was _she _really the reason he left?

"But worst of all," he added, almost as though he hadn't heard her, "at the same time I realized that being who I am...having believed the work was so important... I've driven everyone too hard. I burn out all the people I care about. That's one of the reasons I left without telling anybody. I figured they would be relieved. Hell, I came out of my office one day, and heard Callahan mutter "slave driver" into the phone, and then turn bright red when she saw me. Russ got walking pneumonia and had to take a week off. It nearly killed me to give him a week off. And then I topped it off by having a stupid and unnecessary argument with Rudy about the price of the computer chips he had ordered. And then... there was you." He scratched his head roughly.

She didn't know how to address this, as it was in some part true.

"So, my life...I don't know what to make of my life."

"You can't look at it that way!"

Her words seemed to yank him out of his introspective reverie. "I'm not going to do this with you!" he snapped, jumping to his feet. "I'm not going to sit here and have a heart to heart with you. You are not going to fix me up and set me back on the right path! I don't want you to be here, don't you understand? For chrissakes, would you just go? Fix your own life, will you? And let me live mine! Go!"

It was quite clear he meant what he said. "Okay." she whispered, feeling winded, nodding hard as though to reinforce her will to comply.


	5. Chapter 5

Bionic legs shouldn't shake, but that's exactly what they were doing as she stood. Dazed, she wondered what to do with her beer, and decided - stupidly - that she should take a drink as a sort of pathetic acknowledgment of Oscar's single act of hospitality.

Instantly she regretted it. The cold liquid hit her tooth like a wrecking ball, sending a scream of pain through her head right up into her temple, and she had to catch the back of the nearest chair to maintain her balance.

"What's the matter?" he asked, rising to his feet, concern radically altering his tone of voice.

"Nothing." Jaime replied, blinking fiercely, determined to walk out with some measure of dignity. She began to stagger toward the door, only to have him step in front of her.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa." he said, grasping her arms. "What's the matter?"

"Tooth." she admitted, pressing her hand to her face. "Oh...god... that hurts."

"Let me see if I've got any painkillers. Don't move." Oscar said, galvanized into action. Returning empty handed from both the kitchen and the bathroom, he grabbed his keys. "I'll drive into town and get you some - no wait - I know the dentist. I met him the other night. If we can find him maybe we could persuade him to fix you up right away. Come on."

Jaime nodded and followed him to the door. She had officially given up trying to figure out what was appropriate behavior in this strange situation, and was happy to simply follow an order.

"I'm not faking this for sympathy." she mumbled miserably, compelled to defend herself.

"I would never accuse you of such a thing." he replied, guiding her to the passenger side of his elderly blue truck. They bumped along the back lane out to the highway, Jaime feeling as though each jolt slammed all the pain together - the pain in her tooth and the pain in her heart - into one big miserable mix.

"You're in pretty bad shape." Oscar remarked, cautiously placing his hand on her shoulder. She ventured a look at him, and found him completely changed. No longer furious, he looked like himself - except hairier. The sudden transformation was perplexing, and she couldn't imagine what to make of it, or of him. Maybe he had become schizophrenic in the last two months. Maybe he had multiple personality disorder. Of course, the pain in her head was so bad that if her own grandmother had appeared sitting beside them wearing angel wings Jaime would not have been able to greet her equably. She decided to hold off judgment until her tooth was dealt with.

After a mile or two on smooth highway she was able to sit up straight and wipe the tears of pain from her eyes. "It's easing up a little bit."

The sweeping views of golden hills, shimmering lake, and blue mountains in the distance provided her with distraction for the ten minute drive into town. Upon arrival in Polson, Oscar made a right and pulled up to a place that was called, appropriately, "The Polson Tavern". It was the kind of place sensible single women usually avoided - dark and uninviting, with glowing neon Pabst and Coors signs in the windows. She soon discovered the interior was equally dark, but much more welcoming than she would have guessed.

"Hey, Felix." the bartender called. "What're you having?"

"Nothing right now, Bob. Thanks." Oscar replied as they passed by. He lead them to a small group of men in a booth, who seemed surprised to see their new drinking buddy with a beautiful, if unhappy looking young woman in tow.

"Dean!" Oscar said to a rounded character at the back of the booth. "Got an emergency toothache here - would you mind taking a look?"

"Not at all." Dean said, as though it were the most natural thing in the world for him to receive patients in the bar. Two men slid out to let him through, and he stood up in front of Jaime and smiled reassuringly, peering at her through the bottom of his bifocals.

"Tell me all about it, dear."

Jaime explained - the second last upper molar on the left at the back hurt like hell when it encountered hot and cold, and biting down on it was a problem too.

He grunted thoughtfully and swept his hand to the front of the room to suggest she should walk in that direction. There he washed his hands and beckoned Jaime to him. Bob the bartender opened a drawer and produced a flashlight, handing it to Dean with the sober professionalism of a trained assistant.

"Open up."

It was embarrassing standing back there, practically as though she was on stage, with a portly stranger pointing a flashlight into her mouth.

"Does this hurt?" Dean asked, poking the tooth with his index finger. She recoiled and gurgled in anguish.

"Well, dear, I'm sorry," he sighed, flicking off the flashlight, "but this is more than I can handle tonight. That's a good sized cavity in there, and you might need a root canal. My assistant has gone to a baby shower in Big Fork and I have no idea how to get hold of her. You come in first thing tomorrow and we'll get you all sorted out."

Jaime nodded wanly.

Oscar had been watching the proceedings with interest from the other side of the bar. "Can you give her something for the pain?"

"Hmm, drugstore's closed." Dean murmured regretfully, looking at his watch. Jaime's heart sank. "Let me check my briefcase."

One of the men at the table had already held his briefcase up for him by the time he had ambled back to the booth, and after ferreting around for a few minutes he returned with a small bottle.

"Got any allergies?" She shook her head, and he handed it to her. "There's only one in here. Take it before you go to bed and you should be able to get a decent night's sleep."

"Thanks." Jaime said, with a weak smile. Oscar slapped him on the back as some sort of nonverbal thanks, and turned to guide Jaime out.

"Root canal." he said with hushed horror.

"Listen," she said, as they stepped back into the cool dusky evening air, "I can just go back to my hotel."

"No you can't." Oscar said firmly. "I'll go pick up your stuff from your room. You need looking after."

"You're a very confusing person." she grumbled, sliding into the passenger seat of the truck.

"You think it's bad from out there, you should try being on the inside." he replied, with a rueful grin.

She let him go in and pick up her suitcase and check out, partly because she needed a moment alone to simply be miserable. The pain from prod the dentist had given her was still reverberating in her head - the tooth had definitely had gotten worse. She hugged her knees to her chest and sighed, listening to the silence in the town. Only one or two cars passed as she waited, and she didn't see a single pedestrian - and she thought Ojai was quiet. She was slightly embarrassed by the thought of Oscar up there packing up her suitcase - a rather intimate task - but on the other hand as she had just rooted through his entire house it only seemed fair.

They drove back to the cabin in silence, both still feeling raw and shocked by their argument. Oscar cooked her a large plate of scrambled eggs with tomatoes for dinner which he allowed to cool before he gave them to her, and they ate together on the screened in porch, listening to the lap of the waves on the pebble beach. As she gingerly picked at her dinner, she finally told him of how she had searched his house and found the clues he had planted. He informed her that he had not planted the _Manoir LeCavelier_ brochure, seemed surprised that she had found it, and then reluctantly confessed he had gone there with a girlfriend some years earlier. Jaime beat back the inappropriate specter of jealousy, and asked him about his sanding project. He told her he had to rough up his hands so that it would not be so obvious he had spent the last twenty five years behind a desk. He gave her his hand in demonstration, and she held it for a moment, large, surprisingly warm and impressively callused. She told him he could be mistaken for someone who had always earned an honest living. Though the substance of their argument still burned in the back of Jaime's mind, the hurt dissipated quickly. She didn't have it in her to hold a grudge.

After dinner Jaime built a fire and retired to the daybed to wait for the pain of of eating to dissipate. Wiping his hands on a tea towel, Oscar gazed at her sympathetically.

"You must think I'm being a real wimp." she said.

"Not at all."

"Would you...would you read to me?" she asked tentatively, "It might help me take my mind off it."

"Sure." he said, apparently pleased to have something to do to help. "Let's see," He began to root through a pile of magazines. "Ive got _Harper's_, _Atlantic Monthly_, _The_ _New York Times_ from yesterday..."

"Nothing too weighty..."

"How about _Unlocking the Secrets of the Two Stroke Engine_? No? How about _Moby Dick_?"

"No Melville, I beg you."

"He's my favorite." he replied indignantly.

"He's hard work."

"_The History of Copper Mining in Montana_?"

"Definitely not." she giggled.

Looking over her head to the bookshelf, he smiled. "Ah - I have just the thing. Left by the owner for tenants' edification." He pulled down a slim volume - _Reader's Digest, April 1963. _He looked around the room for a moment, deciding where to sit. His attention returned to the daybed. _"_Scoot over." he commanded. Kicking his shoes off, he sat down right against her and stretched his legs out. As naturally as if it were routine, Jaime wrapped her arm around his waist and laid her head on his shoulder, grateful for the comfort of his warm body. They had spent so much time together - lots of it in transit - in planes and automobiles for hours at a time - and though she had never put her head on his shoulder before, it felt like a completely reasonable thing to do.

He commenced by reading _Let's Dare to Be Square, _followed by _ Listen, My Heart: The Romance of Mabel Hubbard and Alexander Graham Bell, _then _ The Thing From Outer Space _and _Those Knucklehead Machines. _The stories, were varyingly dramatic, spooky, funny, often heart wrenching, and frequently ending with words of comfort and wisdom. Corny, yet palatably so. _If only life were like the Reader's Digest_, Jaime thought to herself, _and didn't have all these loose ends and insoluble problems..._

As she reached for her precious pain killer, Oscar said, "Here's a good one for you._ Are You a Hypochondriac? " _She swallowed the pill, winced as the water passed over her tooth and slapped him placidly. He chuckled. Quite soon, the stories began to run together in her mind, and Jaime confused the _ The Strange Wedding of Widow Ward _with _ That Empty Chair by the Featherbed. _She fell asleep sometime during _ The Wonderful White Stallions of Vienna, _images of Lipizzan horses melding into the comforting intonations of Oscar's voice.

She could have sworn she had only dropped off for a moment when his voice changed - it was anxious and agitated. When she opened her eyes it was as though they were still shut - the fire was out, the room was pitch black, and the air was chilly.

"I think it's a ...'K' an upper case 'K'" he mumbled. "I can't... I'm sorry...just let me think, give me a minute..." The words were stumbling out of him, and he was twitching.

"Hey..." she murmured gently, rubbing his chest. "Oscar, you're dreaming. It's okay. It's just a dream. It's okay."

She heard a sharp intake of breath, and then his body relaxed.

"Are you all right?" she asked. "Awake?"

"Yeah."

"What were you dreaming about?"

"Ah, the usual." he sighed disgustedly. She could hear the rasp of his hand on his beard as he rubbed his face. "I had forgotten the disarmament code for some weapon or other, and the whole damned continent was going to blow up and it was all my fault." He sighed again, exhaling the horror of the imaginary situation.

"You have that dream a lot?"

"Yeah." he said. There was a pause. "I suppose we ought to break this little party up. You can sleep in the bedroom and..."

"No." she interrupted. She resisted as she felt him shift, leaning toward the light to turn it on. "Let's just stay here, like this. Just a little while longer."

"Are you sure? You've got a big day under the dentist's drill tomorrow."

"Yes. I'm sure."

"Okay." he replied, in a don't-say-I-didn't-tell-you-so tone. "Hang on." He shifted out from her loose embrace and got to his feet. The chill raced in to where they had been pressed together, and she shivered. She could hear him fumbling blindly through the room, bumping into objects as he went. She curled up, hugging her knees to her chest for warmth. A moment later he returned with a big wool blanket which he arranged over them. He pulled Jaime close to him again and settled down with a sigh.

"You can't live here all year round, can you?" she asked.

"No. Lyle has a trailer on his property that he says I can move into in October."

"A trailer?" Jaime giggled. Imagining Oscar in a trailer was quite a stretch.

"How's the tooth?"

"Can't feel a thing. It's great."

There was a long silence. She might have thought he was asleep, but she could tell from his breath that he was still awake.

"You know," he said finally, "I made it sound like it was all your fault that I left, and that's not fair. It was a lot of things."

"I figured."

"I guess what is true is that having you around the OSI made it better for me - kept the disillusionment at bay."

"I had no idea you felt that way." Her heart panged with guilt. "Russ told me you lost a two agents." Somehow the darkness that enveloped made it safe to talk, to bring up things that she might otherwise have feared would make him angry.

"Yeah." he replied sadly. "Hugh Bennett and Dave Yamamura. That was a terrible loss. Dave and I had known each other for a long time, since the Navy. He was a very tough, honest, decent guy. When I went to the funeral his wife wouldn't speak to me - and I don't blame her." There was disgust in his voice. "He didn't want to go on that mission and of course I bullied him into it."

A suitable platitude was difficult to find. "It's the nature of the job." Jaime said weakly. "You were doing what you had to do."

"As always." Oscar replied bitterly. "It really got to me. I still feel sick about it. And Parr was all over me. He was already on high alert over your retirement attempt, having figured out that I must have tipped you off about their plans for you. He took that, and the deaths of Dave and Hugh, and a couple of other messes of mine to the Secretary, suggesting that my work wasn't up to scratch anymore."

"Oh Oscar!" Jaime said, "I had no idea."

"You weren't supposed to have any idea. In my mind, you were retired. Anyway, it blew over, but that _really_ bent me out of shape. I was mad as hell - angry all the time, worse every day. I started to wonder if I was losing my sanity. I had the sudden overwhelming conviction that I had to get out - right away - but if I knew if I tried to retire the conventional manner, Parr would use it to support his case against me, and then I'd have to go through a bunch of psychological tests just so I could retire in semi-disgrace to that 'holiday compound' they were going to send you to."

"But I thought you said you would sue them from hell to breakfast?"

"I suppose that's my childish revenge fantasy. I don't quite know what they would do with me."

"So why here?"

"Well, this state is littered with single guys who live without the benefit of a social security number - I figured I wouldn't stand out at all. It's still pretty much the wild west, you know. And they tend to hate the federal government and ignore it as much as possible. That suited me too." He paused, and added cautiously, "So...what's your diagnosis, Doctor? Have I lost my mind?"

"I'm not sure. This afternoon I thought you had, but now I'm not sure."

"I behaved badly - I'm sorry. I was just a little ... shocked... to see you. I thought I had covered my tracks."

"Well, that's okay." she replied, a little amazed at how easily she could forgive him. "But I need to know - are you all right? Are you really all right?"

"I think so. I'm not sure yet."

"You can't honestly tell me you're going to spend the rest of your life in the backwoods of Montana fixing boats."

"Why not?"

"Speaking of people who are not likely to find happiness behind a white picket fence. I'm not sure you were destined for a quiet life."

"It suits me perfectly." he insisted.

"Then you ought to know how I feel!" she said defensively. "Picket fences are looking pretty good to me."

"Then I guess we've both found a new niche, haven't we?"

"No." Jaime answered forcefully. "You _can't_ fix boats for the rest of your life, Oscar Goldman. It's a waste."

"The boat owners of Flathead lake might not say that."

"It's not going to be enough for you." she replied firmly. "You're used to moving mountains."

"I'm sick of moving mountains."

"I know - I understand - believe me - but hear me out. You are one of the most powerful men in the country, you know everybody in Washington, and you are also the most persuasive person I have ever met. Think what you could do - other than the OSI. All kinds of great things."

"Like what?"

"You could be a lobbyist. You could join a cause and harass politicians to do the right thing - wipe out poverty, or put more books in schools, or help people in the third world."

"I guess." he said uncertainly. "I guess I should ... but...I...I don't want to, Jaime." he blurted. "I can't."

"It's okay." she said soothingly, feeling the anxiety in his body. "I shouldn't press you like that."

"I can't be responsible anymore. I can't take it."

"Okay. That's okay." She instinctively put her hand over his heart, as though to settle it. "Just don't forget that you have a lot to give, and that you have a lot of friends who miss you."

"Well ... thanks. I guess I do feel badly about running out on everybody."

"Glad to hear it." she reproved gently.

"How come we seem to know so much about each other and so little about ourselves?" he asked with a small laugh.

"Ain't that the truth?"

"I never meant to burn myself out like that - but I couldn't say no. I couldn't ever leave the crisis of the day because I needed to take an evening off. Finally I didn't have any evenings off. In the last couple of months I was averaging about three hours of sleep a night."

"You know, I'm almost glad to hear that. At times I have wondered if you were a Dr. Franklin special, controlled from some remote location. The way you've worked yourself is inhuman. Nobody can do that forever. Not even you. At the very least I'm glad that you've realized that."

He ran a hand firmly up and down the length of her back, warming in her a glimmering of arousal. Almost as though he had read her mind, (or was it the change in her breath?) his hand stopped at her midback, and he patted her companionably. _Always the gentleman_, she thought, half in gratitude and half in frustration.

"So you've... had a good couple of months?" There was caution in his voice, perhaps the awareness that he had earlier cast aspersions on her new goals in life.

"Yes."

"Do you have plans? Anything I don't know about?"

"Not really." Jaime said. "I've been taking it day by day. No matter what you think, I'm loving the routine and the predictability. Did you really think of me as being retired?"

"Sure. I thought you could be active on paper and retired in reality. I can't guarantee that now, of course, but Russ pretty much saw eye to eye with me about you."

"What am I going to do without you?" Jaime asked, her eyes stinging.

"Now don't go getting all sentimental on me." he replied, forcing cheer into his voice.

"In my wildest dreams I never imagined that you wouldn't be there. I hate to admit it...but maybe I have been treating you like a parent... or taking you for granted. I assume I can do whatever I want, but that you'll always be there to pick me up afterward."

"Well, I took it for granted that you wouldn't mind going on every mission I dreamed up for you, so I guess we're even."

"Not quite even - I won't be able to call you. I can't even write you a letter if I want to."

He cleared his throat. "You'll be fine. You've been fine for the last two months."

"I was just taking a breather. That doesn't mean I never wanted to see you again!" The thought that she had been suppressing all along - that Oscar might disappear from her life for good, was now looming in front of her, and she was frightened by it - actually frightened, almost panicky.

"Take it easy, Babe, take it easy." There was a constriction in his voice that betrayed his own feelings, despite his words.

"You think nobody cares. And you're wrong. Dead wrong. You get the weirdest ideas in your head sometimes!"

"Sshhhh..." he said, collecting her into a close embrace.

She gripped him tighter and buried her face in his neck, a few tears squeezing from her eyes.

"Come on, Babe, Easy now." he whispered. "It's going to be okay. We're going to be okay. Everything changes all the time Babe, and we adjust - we don't have a choice."

Though what he said was true, she was not convinced, partly because his tone was so unconvincing. This was all so wrong. Life was supposed to be all sorted out, but she was here she was feeling bewildered and sad.


	6. Chapter 6

She woke at sunrise the next morning, nudged into consciousness by the dull throb in the back of her mouth. She felt every bit like someone who had slept in her clothes and failed to brush her teeth the night before. Oscar was lying against her back, his arm around her, his breath soft on her neck, the slight burr of a snore in his throat. The air was cool and fresh, and squares of pure gold light blazed on the opposite wall from the multipaned windows. The lake was hushed but present in the distance. It almost sounded like it was breathing too, gently and quietly, as though it hadn't woken yet either. He had chosen his escape well, she realized. It felt like the first morning of summer holidays, the best day of the year.

Still in that quiet state of early wakefulness, it all seemed to make sense. Oscar had found himself the perfect antidote to the OSI. Here, there would be no four a.m. phone calls. No longer did he run an organization employing hundreds of people whom he dispatched all over the globe in the dangerous business of trying to keep the country (and even the entire world) safe. Now he had a boss. Instead of being responsible for the security and wellbeing of the entire United States, he was only responsible for fiberglass patches, spar varnish and two stroke engines - and one man to answer to. He was nobody's daddy anymore.

She ran her arm up his, securing him close to her, thinking how unlikely it was for her to be lying here on a saggy daybed, next to her former boss, in a cabin in Montana.

A short time later, they got up together, quiet and slightly ill at ease with one another. Oscar gulped down coffee, but Jaime declined, having developed a fear of hot substances. They each took a shower and at 7:40 headed to town, the atmosphere in the truck tense and a little mournful.

In the waiting room, Oscar resisted the receptionist's attempts at pleasantries. Jaime's presence had stirred up all manner of doubts in his mind, as he knew it would. The real reason he had left Washington without a word to anyone was that he feared he could be talked out of it, and Jaime held that power over him more than anyone. Now, with her here, he was reminded of all that he had left behind and all the people he had let down when he walked out. The guilt made him sweaty and twitchy. He had been crushed down to the bone by his job and had needed to get away for his sanity - maybe even for his life - but there was nothing more foreign to him than walking away. Did he think he would turn into someone else - someone who was not fettered by that over developed sense of responsibility? This was a rock and hard place, because at the same time he could not bear the thought of going back - it made him physically ill. There seemed to be no in between - he either had to remain a fugitive, or go back and throw himself into the machinery again.

Then, looming larger still in his mind, was her. Once she was gone, he might never see her again. He thought he had accepted that idea when he decamped from Washington, but seeing her here, holding her close to him - the thought of letting her go filled him with a sickening dread. He picked up one of the tattered three year old _Good Housekeeping _magazines and flipped through it agitatedly.

An hour later, Jaime was released from the chair, having only required a rather large filling. On the drive back from town she pinched at her rubbery cheek and glanced at Oscar.

"Do you really think I'm incapable of living a normal life?" she asked timidly.

He took her hand, looking apologetic. "Look, Babe, you can go on being just exactly as you are. You are a perfectly wonderful human being - but I want you make sure that you really know yourself, and _know_ what makes you happy, before you commit to anything. I think you're feeling relieved to be out of the OSI right now, and that the routine feels good, but ultimately I'm not sure that's going to be enough."

She nodded, and he squeezed her hand.

"That's good advice. You ought to listen to it too." she said, after a minute.

He smiled at her and turned his attention back to the road. The next time he looked at her his expression was clouded and serious.

"I think you should leave." he said.

"I know." she whispered.

"Hanging around here with me is not going to help you figure out your own life. So I want you to go, okay?"

She nodded, a hollow sadness dropping into her heart.

They were silent for the rest of the drive, and through breakfast - eggs again. She ate slowly and cautiously - her new worry was that, still numbed, she would bite herself. She ate slowly for another reason too - she didn't want to leave.

"Thanks for coming after me." he said as they walked out to her car.

"You're welcome." she replied quietly, turning to face him.

She was surprised when he gathered her into his arms, lifting her to him, lifting her mouth to his. What surprised her even more was the strength of her own response. His lips were warm and supple, his kiss sensual - sweet and passionate all at once. She had no strength or desire to resist, so she wrapped her arms around his neck, and gave herself into the moment fully, pressing herself to him, until, breathless and shaky, she pulled away and hugged him to her tightly, steadying herself against him.

"I've wanted to do that for a long time." he whispered.

It took her a moment to find her voice, and then she didn't know what to say. "I have to tell Rudy and Russ that you're okay." she breathed finally.

"What will you say?" he asked, nuzzling her cheek.

"I'm going to tell them... you're adjusting nicely to Thailand and that I have some hope you might come back someday."

"Tell them I have a twenty two year old Thai girlfriend." he said.

"I will do no such thing!" she replied indignantly, and felt him laugh.

"They wouldn't believe you anyway." he replied, pulling back to look at her.

"That beard is awful." she said.

"I know." he grinned. This time she kissed him - despite the fact she knew she shouldn't. What would Chris think? But she wanted to kiss him again so very badly, and if she never saw him again at least they would have that. She kissed him whole heartedly, her love for him melting into powerful sexual desire. Suddenly she pulled back, sure that if she didn't, she would be in bed with him in about three minutes flat.

Oscar rested his forehead against hers, his breath uneven. "I'm sorry I called Roger...or Chris...or whatever the hell his name is... a cold cut."

Jaime smiled sadly.

"You've got to go, Babe." he said, suddenly brusque, taking her by the shoulders and pushing himself away from her.

"When am I going to see you again?" she asked, taking his hands from her shoulders and holding them tight.

"I don't know." he replied, his eyes haunted. "You know where I am."

"Bye." she said. Tears rose to her eyes.

His lips formed the words, but there was no sound."Bye."

They kissed once more, this time a kiss of parting - firm, adamant, and they released each other. She walked to the car feeling like she was walking straight off a precipice. As she sat down behind the wheel she felt as though she were falling, spinning in air, the world blurred and confused.

Oscar watched her start the car, put it into reverse and maneuver until she faced uphill. She paused and smiled at him wistfully. Just as she was about to take her foot off the brake and head up the hill, the truth hit him so hard it knocked the air out of him. _Jaime, you belong with me. We belong together. _"Jaime!" he blurted, rushing forward. Looking concerned - or what was that expression-? - she rolled down the window. Sometimes the human brain works too fast, for immediately following that flash of truth, another series of thoughts followed in quick succession. Just because it was so clearly true for him didn't mean it was true for her. She had a boyfriend, she had a life. She wanted to be normal. He was a fugitive with nothing to offer - except love, and love was not enough.

He hesitated, bent down to the car window, then he smiled. "Take care of yourself. Floss nightly."

She looked at him searchingly, as though she knew he had meant to say something else. Oscar had thought he would wave goodbye, standing in the lane to watch her car disappear over the hill, but now he felt that he couldn't stand it. He gave her another quick and mirthless smile, and turned and walked straight into the cabin, closed the door behind him, and sat on the kitchen floor, his arms folded tightly around him, staring unseeingly at the patterns in the ancient linoleum until the sound of the car had been out of earshot for five minutes. Then, as though he were a puppet, his movements mechanical and disengaged, he got in his truck and drove to Lyle's Boat Repair shop.

Though she had the strong impulse to drag her feet, to at least get herself sorted herself out so that she could leave with some sense of resolution, the highway was free of cars and the miles slipped by, the big lake her companion on the right. She needed to get home, she told herself. She needed stability and predictability and safety - the safety of a life that held some surprises, but small ones, and not too many of them. Her whole life had been nothing but huge and terrifying surprises, and she didn't want any more. As she drove past Somers she glanced the water for the last time behind her in the rear view mirror, and whispered a goodbye. Before she knew it she was back in Kalispell, at the airport. Still, she found herself hoping that there might be a shortage of flights going out for the next couple of days so she could go back - would she go back? _No!_ She _wanted_ to go home. There was a seat available on a flight to Minneapolis, and she took it. A friendly business man sitting next to her tried to engage her in light conversation, but she couldn't bring herself to make any sort of chitchat with him. Confused and dispirited, she stared out the airplane window and pondered Oscar, and the anger he expressed and the beard he wore and those kisses they shared ... and everything he had said the night before.

Their conversation roiled ceaselessly around in her head - and all of it was hard to sort out. Did he know her as well as he seemed to? She felt bruised and raw, yet loved and protected. She felt utterly and embarrassingly transparent - and perfectly understood. The one thing rankling her was his assertion that she was a compulsive rescuer - it didn't seem fair. She just liked to do the right thing, that was all. The rebellious teenager jab was true, and she could see that. There was nothing more pleasurable than occasionally telling the US government to stuff it. They all did it - Oscar included. But was it true that she was some sort of crazed Florence Nightingale? And could a trait like that actually dictate her the way she lived?

The memory that kept forcing itself unbidden into her thoughts was of her parents' car accident. How many times had that morning played back in her mind? Thousands, easily. For years she had imagined herself intervening in some small way, creating a tiny delay that would cause them to leave the house an instant later than they did, and then by the magic of time and sequences of events, they would have avoided the accident by a split second. Having just learned to drive herself, what if she had borrowed the car the night before and lost the keys? Or asked for some last minute help with homework? What if she had given them each a long hug before they left and told them she loved them? Would that have been enough? These were the thoughts that had haunted her for years - the rescue she could not perform. Now, of course she knew they still would have died - they were targeted, and nothing she could have done would have saved them. But still, life taught her early on that sometimes you didn't get second chances, so you never, _ever_ let an opportunity to help slip by.

She thought of the way the Principal had protested when she wanted to go look for Kevin Melnyck that afternoon a couple of weeks ago. "Isn't that the parent's job?" he had suggested. But Jaime was having none of it. She had to find him, and nobody else would do. Was it true then - was she a compulsive rescuer?

She rolled into her own driveway at ten that evening, relieved to be home. Of course there was the usual pile of bills and a layer of dust all over everything. and the carriage house felt a little strange to her, as it always did after she had been away. She unpacked, throwing most everything into the wash, built a fire, and got into a fresh nightie. She cooked herself an uninspired dinner of spaghetti with butter and dried parsley and ate it, at least comfortable in the knowledge that her tooth would not scream in protest. She felt pathetically alone.

Her place and her life felt all the emptier at this moment knowing Oscar was not in Washington. It was like the Lincoln Memorial not being in Washington, except worse, because the Lincoln Memorial couldn't talk you out of a fit of pique, or reassure you when you were feeling insecure. It hadn't occurred to her for an instant that she had propped him up just as much as he propped her up. Now she imagined them both as wooden chairs who each suddenly found they now had to make do with three legs instead of four. In the safety and quiet of her own house, feeling calmer and possibly a little clearer, she ventured to ask herself how she felt about Oscar, knowing how he felt about her - but then she stopped herself short. There was no point in even asking the question. _No point._

She reported in to Russ after she'd done the dishes, and told him that she'd found Oscar and that he was safe. Russ didn't even ask where he was - almost as though he didn't want the burden of that knowledge. He did ask her if she thought he was gone for good, and Jaime could only answer that she didn't know. Somehow she felt even sadder when she hung up the phone.

Though it was one in the morning, she decided to call Chris. Even if she woke him and he was grumpy, she needed a voice ringing in her head that wasn't Oscar's. She needed support and comfort from a man who wasn't Oscar. Little did Chris know it, but his burden was doubling now that the most reliable man in Jaime's life had resigned the position. Chris wasn't asleep in fact, and he sounded delighted to hear from her. He told her that he thought he would be able to make it to Ojai for the weekend, and then he spoke excitedly for some minutes about the amazing project he was working on, a tracking system that used satellite technology. They exchanged a few words about the mysterious disappearance of the boss, and then he asked her how she was doing, and what she had been up to. She murmured a few false words about guarding a prince in Qatar, and fell silent. There was a quiet chewing noise on the other end of the line, so she asked him what he was eating. She couldn't help but cringe when he told her it was a baloney sandwich.


End file.
